


Heat

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Comfort Sex, F/F, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Freezing, Hurt/Comfort, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Rescue, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 10:01:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9318329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hawke gets lost on an expedition and ends up trapped, injured, and faced with hypothermia.Merrill rescues her. Then Hawke needs some comfort.Then they, you know, Do Stuff.





	

Hawke tried to stop herself from crying in frustration, because the tears quickly turned so cold that they burned her already-numbing face. She had been trapped at the bottom of the cliff for hours, ever since she'd slipped on some ice and crashed into a pile of boulders that pinned one of her legs to the ground. She had struggled in vain since then, trying to free herself, but the sharp rocks had a grip on her bleeding leg just like a bear trap. 

That was around mid-day, and now darkness had fallen. It would be even harder for Merrill to find her now. The two of them had split up after lunch to gather wood for their campfire, and that was when Hawke had fallen. How Hawke wished she were a mage like her friend--if that were the case, she could just blast some fire to melt the ice around her, or maybe heal herself, or at least fucking save herself from death by hypothermia.

The idea made her break out in shivers. She had already been shivering, and her fingers had turned a bright shade of red. She was wearing long pants, with boots and a coat over her tunic, but she hadn't prepared to spend a night in the snow. And the temperatures fell drastically after dark. Already her lips had dried and cracked from the cold, and parts of her face hurt. If she had to spend the night out here, she faced a real threat of her fingers turning frostbitten. She'd remembered recoiling in horror at Anders' description of frostbitten fingers. That could not happen to her, ever in a thousand years, or she'd want to just put herself out of her misery. Her life was one of shooting arrows, picking locks and setting traps, and she couldn't survive with stumps for hands.

She thrashed against the rocks that trapped her. "Please!" It was a scream of frustration more than anything else, or maybe a prayer to the Maker she barely believed in. But her cry fell flat, muted by the rocks and the bitter, freezing wind.

The wind picked up, sending hard bits of ice and snow into her hair. To her horror, the sky began to rumble, and she felt the first pelts of freezing rain. Then they came down harder, like a thousand mini whip-lashes, and Hawke closed her eyes to try to escape from her silent sobs.

Heavy drowsiness came over her. She felt surreal suddenly, and then very hot. Too hot, like she was stranded in the middle of a furnace. Delirium rose over her like an ocean wave and suddenly she wanted to laugh, but the muscles in her face wouldn't move. Why wouldn't they move? Where was she? Why did nothing make sense?

And then she slipped into blackness.

#

"Dread wolf! Holy shit--Hawke!" 

The frantic voice pulled Hawke out of her deep sea of darkness. Her eyes were heavy to open, and then Merrill's thin fingers were on her face, brushing snow and ice out of her eyelids. Merrill's hands grabbed the sides of Hawke's face, and a jolt of warmth flooded through her like nothing she'd ever felt before. New tears sprung to her eyes, tears of relief. 

Merrill looked at Hawke with her deep green eyes. "You've been out here for hours. You're freezing--your fingers are blue, look at them. You've been out here so long it's made you disoriented!"

Hawke tried to reach for Merrill with arms that were too numb to move. She thought about their camp--about the fire, and the hot stew they'd made earlier, and the blankets she could bury herself in. She tried to thank Merrill, to express how grateful she was, but she found her mouth didn't work the way it was supposed to.

"Cold," she manager to whimper. 

"I know, Hawke." Merrill wrapped both arms around Hawke and embraced her in a tight hug. "Those rocks put a nasty gash in your leg. Let me just blast them off of you and heal the injury, and we'll be out of here."

One blood spell later, and Hawke was able to limp, with Merrill's help, away from the deadly place and back up the trail toward camp.

#

As Hawke struggled along the path, with Merrill's arms wrapped firmly around her waist and shoulders, several thoughts came to her mind. The first thought was how mortified she was of herself. She was Hawke, the fucking Champion of Kirkwall for Maker's sake, and she had been whimpering and crying like a blasted idiot. But Merrill didn't seem to notice or care. Hawke decided to blame her embarrassing weakness on the cold. After all, it had altered her mind, and in those moments she had not been herself.

But in *this* moment, she very much WAS herself, and she was aware of a new feeling that lit her up like electricity: the firm tug of Merrill's arms around hers. She had enjoyed eyeing her blood mage friend for a long time, now. Merrill had shared several stories of bedding other women at the elven alienage back in Lowtown. Hawke had always dismissed them as bravado, or trying to convince the others in their group that she wasn't as naive as they'd pegged her to be. Hawke had never dared interpret it any other way--her heart pounded too fast, and her hands got too sweaty, each time she tried. But now, with Hawke discovering heat in her body in places that perhaps Merrill didn't intend, she allowed herself to wonder.

They got to camp. Hawke had never been so happy to see her sleeping bag in her entire life. Their fire was dull and dying, but Merrill shot a bolt of magic into it and it rose to a pillar of flame. Hawke stood there, shivering so hard her teeth chattered.

Merrill walked up to her and put a firm hand on Hawke's shoulders. "We need to get you warm now, and these clothes are freezing and wet." She leaned in toward Hawke's ear, and her voice dropped to a gentle but firm order. "So take them off."

Hawke's buzz of excitement turned to a strange feeling that made her giddy and afraid and overjoyed all in the same moment. She felt like her heart would pound like a drum in her ribcage forever. She was glad the other members of the gang weren't on this expedition--not because of seeking her unclothed, because most of them already had and none of them cared--but because she wanted this moment to include just her and Merrill, all to themselves.

Hawke made a brief keening noise in the back of her throat.

Merrill smiled. The expression held equal parts nurturing, concern and--Hawke allowed herself to hope--lust. "Your fingers are too numb to work properly. Poor thing. I'll have to undress you myself."

Hawke stood trembling as Merrill undid the buttons and laces and drawstrings of Hawke's cold wet clothes, and slowly peeled them all away. Soon she was left in nothing but her smallclothes and breastband. They were red, her favorites, and the ones she felt most attractive in, which sent another rush of heat to her face. She wasn't sure how to react, so she leaned slightly forward into Merrill's aura of warmth.

Merrill wrapped a thick blanket around Hawke, who was still shivering violently, and led her to sit down next to the roaring campfire. The warmth seeped into every cell of Hawke's body, soothing her back to life like a breath of air from the Maker. Soon Merrill appeared again with another blanket and a mug of hot tea.

Hawke gulped eagerly from the mug, even though the tea scalded her mouth. She downed the cup in seconds. When she looked up, Merrill was still watching her. Silently. Expectantly. Almost like a predator.

"Thank you for saving me." Hawke's eyes shifted from Merrill to the fire. She wasn't used to being vulnerable, or to humbling herself. "I guess you're all too used to me making a bloody fool of myself. Literally, in this case." She glanced down at her leg where the icy rock had wounded her, but Merrill's magic had already healed it.

"You don't have to thank me." Merrill's tone was different from the humbleness that one might expect with those words. "I didn't have a choice." She paused, and licked her lips. "If I left you out there to freeze in the cold, I wouldn't get to feel you or taste you, would I?"

Hawke almost choked on her tea. "What?"

"Hawke. You couldn't pick up all those hints I was dropping?" Merrill shook her head, mostly with amusement. "I made it so obvious that I wanted you, that Isabela and Anders had a bet going on about how long it would take you to figure it out. Of course, you've always been the dense type. Haven't you? And they always said that I was the socially awkward one--oh, void, I'm talking too much, like usual, why don't I just--"

And then Merrill kissed her. Hawke didn't see it coming until the blood mage's lips crashed into hers, and then she wrapped her own arms around Merrill's waist and pulled her closer against herself, until the two of them toppled onto the ground next to the fire, arms and legs all tangled up together. Hawke's blanket fell away, but somehow this time she didn't feel in danger of freezing.

"Let's take this off." Merrill's nimble fingers worked their way to the back of Hawke's breastband. Hawke moaned, a soft purring sound that conveyed comfort and affection and the desire to be taken and explored in whatever way Merrill wished.

"After all," Merrill said, "I have to keep you warm somehow. The standard tea and blankets might not do the trick, given what the temperature is supposed to drop to, but I know other things that will."

Merrill leaned in and kissed Hawke again, then kissed her way down her face and neck. She bit Hawke's neck and licked it until Hawke squirmed, then moved down to plant open-mouthed kisses and bits on Hawke's ticklish collarbone. Hawke's back arced in the air, and she wrapped both legs around Merrill's waist. She realized in a hazy moment that she was almost naked, while the blood mage was still fully clothed, but she found she enjoyed it. It gave her a power imbalance and feeling of submission and being cared for, which she normally never got to experience. Hawke decided to relax.

Merrill finished removing Hawke's breastband, and tossed it away towards the tent. She climbed on top of Hawke and stared intently at her tits. They were on the small side of medium, with a few scars from various battles, and red nipples that stood up like peaks. Merrill ran a fingertip across one of them, and smiled at the way Hawke keened. 

"There will be more of this," she whispered slowly. "Let me enjoy you. Let me take care of you."

Hawke was all too happy to oblige. Merrill worked both nipples, one in each hand, while she moved her mouth lower to kiss and lick Hawke's stomach. It, too, was lean and scarred, and perfectly beautiful, if not a bit too thin from too much running and not enough food. Merrill made a mental note to cook more for her. 

Hawke's keening noises had turned into a loud rhythm of sounds, giving Merrill a surge of confidence. She quickly moved upward and took one of Hawke's stiff nipples into her mouth. Hawke let out a loud cry, and Merrill continued to hold the bud in her mouth as she licked and teased it with her tongue. She firmly kneaded the other nipple with her hands, and after a few minutes, switched sides.

Hawke was writhing and panting now. Merrill worked her breasts harder. She alternated between licking, gentle biting, and hard pinching to the point of slight pain. Hawke arced her back again, and shuddered, and her entire body broke out into a ripple of shivers and unintelligible sounds.

Merrill stopped and sat up, looking down at Hawke with a smirk. "You like this?"

Hawke nodded, panting, hoping she could telepathically beg Merrill into continuing and never stopping again.

"Good," whispered Merrill, "Because we have all of tonight, and all of the nights to come."

She bent back down towards her task. By the time Hawke's smallclothes were gone, Hawke had reached levels of bliss so radiant that it was like she was outside of her own being.

Merrill's fingers and tongue found Hawke in all kinds of new places, and no one was watching but the forest.

The forest kept the secrets of the way Hawke sounded when she screamed.

#

Hours later, the temperature had fallen so low that each leaf on each tree was coated in its own layer of ice. But Hawke and Merrill were perfectly warm. They spent the night beside the fire, inside their blankets, curled up with each other like two souls of the same person.

#

Hawke never felt cold inside again.


End file.
